#24 Earth Geeks Must Go!

“I asked him to kindly return my pipe to the side table where he found it. He declined and attempted a poor René Magritte reference.”

– ‘The Treachery of Images’, one of surreal artist René Magritte’s most famous works, is simply an image of a pipe above the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (This is not a pipe.) Magritte more-or-less makes the comment that a representation of a subject is not the same thing as the subject itself. Magritte’s usual theme was re-appropriating ordinary, everyday sights and objects into visually disorienting places. See works like ‘Golconda’, ‘Okapi’, ‘The Son of Man’ or ‘Personal Values’.

“(The patient then heaved pipe across the room. I later found it wedged between the leaves of one of my many office ficuses)”

– Small ficuses, otherwise known as fig trees, are common pot plants in offices.

“listing the dull things that he’s into, which are bland enough to double for the Facebook interests of anyone who graduated from state college with a business degree.”

– ubiquitously popular social networking website, founded in 2004 by four computer science students, the best known being Mark Zuckerberg.

“Doctor: Is it possibly meant to be some sort of anorexia commentary? Patient: Bulimia maybe, because you’ll definitely want to throw up after a few pages of teethed-armpit-eating.”

– Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are common eating disorders. Both are associated with self-image obsessions and the conditions are often co-morbid with each other. Anorexia commonly involves withdrawal from and careful monitoring of food, overfrequent exercise, dining only in private, and denial of the condition. Bulimia is typically over-eating (“bingeing”) and then forced ejection through vomiting or consumption of laxatives (“purging”). Overexercising and fasting after the binge is also common.

“Patient: …fend off the insects’ assault with high pitched singing. See, here’s where I’d make a reference to a musician with an unusual or unappealing voice. …Doctor: So, for instance, if you were to say that the two kids were anxious to thank Judy Holliday for coming to their rescue– Patient: Exactly. See, this stuff writes itself.”

– Actor-singer Judy Holliday (1921-1965) affected a squeaky, quavery Noo-Yorkah voice as Billie in Born Yesterday, winning an Academy Award for Best Actress.

– UK drama series Skins (2007-) and its American-Canadian remake of the same name (2011-), set in teenage environments, warts and all, are presumably popular with the crowd of microblogging site Tumblr.

“Patient: …And if that means that occasionally I have to do a self-indulgent meta entry, then so be it. Doctor: Well, would anyone even want to read that? Patient: Of course! There’s a reason why everyone’s favorite M. Night Shyamalan movie is Lady in the Water.”

– M. Night Shyamalan, probably previously noted, made the 2006 childish fantasy film Lady in the Water. Although his previous film, The Village, was also badly received, Lady in the Water really began his downward slide. Open acknowledgement of stock characters and fairytale tropes, the inclusion of a film critic character (who is then killed off), and his own expanded role as a messianic author were taken as self-indulgences.

“Doctor: I snee mut you did mere.”

– The phrase “I see what you did there” has become one of the internet’s more popular shibboleths over the last few years.

“I just parked in your garage while I went to go see Hanna across the street and didn’t realize that the theater didn’t validate parking. …Patient: Well, she shoots Cate Blanchett.”

– the 2011 black-ops action film Hanna stars Saoirse Ronan as the eponymous child super-soldier. Hanna is trained from birth to assassinate Cate Blanchett’s character, a task she accomplishes at the end.

“After our session ended, I sought out the rest of the story online, in the form of a Wikipedia entry on the novel.”